Table of Contents
By Neshat
Racism. When I think about it, I often return to my own story; my journey from an underdeveloped country to a developed one that I believed would welcome people of every ethnicity. I imagined arriving in a place where everyone accepted me with open arms. But the reality was far from that.
My first job in the new country was managing a small café. Everything was unfamiliar: workplace rules, slang, accents, and cultural expectations. Because I worked in customer service, I interacted with people constantly. Many customers stared at my dark eyes as if they were unusual, asking where I was “really” from. Sometimes they guessed Eastern Europe, but when I told them my true background, some laughed, turned away, or treated me differently.
Even the community that had emigrated from my own country years earlier did not accept me. They spoke the same language as me yet told me I couldn’t understand life in Australia because my English wasn’t “as good as theirs” and they “knew better.” I expected support from people who shared my mother tongue, but instead I felt judged and excluded.
I still find myself blaming the fact that English is my second language. I was told that I cannot be “good enough” compared with a native speaker. But here is the question I want people to think about: if you immigrated to my country, a country where the language is considered one of the most difficult in the world to learn, would you be able to spell or pronounce even one word correctly on your first day?
Learning a new language is not a simple task. It takes time, courage, and constant effort. Yet immigrants are often judged harshly for every mistake, every mispronunciation, every accent. People forget that speaking two languages is not a weakness; it is a strength. It means you have lived more than one life, carried more than one culture, and worked twice as hard to be understood.
So, when someone laughs at an immigrant’s English, they are not proving their superiority. They are proving their lack of empathy. Because anyone who has ever tried to learn a foreign language knows how difficult it is , and how brave you must be to use it publicly.
All of these experiences point to one thing: racial attitudes toward new immigrants. For many people, this behaviour makes the beginning of a new life extremely difficult. Some even regret leaving their home country and wish to return. Others, overwhelmed by discrimination and isolation, may feel hopeless about the life they worked so hard to build.
Most immigrants leave their country hoping to find a better quality of life in some other part of the world. But racism in the new country can make them feel unwelcome, unsafe, or invisible.
We must remember that all of us are human beings with different shapes, colours, and backgrounds, and these differences make life complete. None of us is born superior to another. Factors like sex, skin colour, eye colour, or cultural background should never determine someone’s worth.
We are all born to help one another and to make this earth a better place to live.
